LDL&S: Social Security

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable. – Bobby Bragan

A propos of yesterday’s post on the future of Social Security, I thought I’d say a word about two different statistics often cited in Social Security debates as evidence of the unworkability of the current system that don’t quite prove what people think.

First, people often claim that while Social Security may have made sense when originally passed, it is no longer a viable system because of increases in life expectancy. So, for example, back during the Great Social Security battle of 2005, the Bush administration’s talking points stated that “Social Security was designed in 1935 for a world that is very different from today… In 1935, the average American did not live long enough to collect retirement benefits. Today, life expectancy is 77 years.”

The statistic may sound compelling, but only if, unlike Bobby Bragan, we don’t attend to the meaning of the word “average”:

Why I Expect to Collect Social Security

A few years back a poll was conducted which seemed to show that people in their twenties thought they were more likely to see a UFO than they were to ever collect social security. Now the results of that particular poll were problematic, but it is true that lots of young people take it as a given that they will never collect social security, because by the time they retire the system will have gone bankrupt. I hear this sort of thinking often, and its generally said with a sort of nonchalant cynicism, as if it would be naive to think otherwise.

Well, perhaps I’ve naive, but I expect that when I get old, I’ll be getting my social security check. Here’s why:

Equality of Opportunity No More Desirable Than Equality of Outcome

When people talk about equality, they sometimes distinguish between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. Equality of outcome, it is said, is neither a possible nor desirable, and ought not be a goal of social policy. Rather, the state ought to focus on creating equality of opportunity, which, unlike equality of outcome, is supposed to be readily attainable without injustice. But if my reflections the other day on the nature of equality are correct, then equality of opportunity is no more desirable as a goal of social policy than is equality of outcome. The reason for this is explained quite eloquently by Theodore Dalrymple:

Equality of opportunity is a thoroughly nasty and totalitarian concept. It is the demand that no one should start (or continue) life with any advantages relative to another. But how could such a condition actually be achieved? Leaving aside genetic differences, which must persist until all hereditary endowments can be made precisely the same, and which for the time being must be accepted even though they are unfair (not unjust, although most people nowadays seem to have difficulty distinguishing between the two), the only way environmental factors affecting opportunities can be made equal is by social engineering on a scale that would make North Korea look like a paradise of laissez-faire.

The Surprising Origin of America’s Public Schools

As in many other countries, public education in the United States began at the instigation of churches. For a long time, schooling was openly religious. In the 1820s, in New York and in other states, legislators became concerned that many students were receiving the wrong type of education. It was not that children were going uneducated – in 1821, about 93 percent of New York’s school age youths were already attending private schools. As expressed in legislative debates, the fear was that students educated in private Catholic schools would learn the wrong values and end up becoming criminals. If Protestant schools could be made less expensive through government subsidies, the legislators reasoned, some Catholics would transfer their children there, thus saving them from a life of crime.

Is Equality Desirable?

At first blush, it may seem obvious that equality ought to be a central goal of social policy, and that insofar as a society contains significant inequalities that society stands revealed as fundamentally unjust. In fact, even many of those who would oppose efforts to decrease inequality admit the desirability of equality as an ideal or goal, and merely contend that these efforts are ineffective or impracticable. Yet upon reflection it is not clear (to me, at any rate) why equality as such should be viewed as having such a central importance in evaluating a society.

To say that two things are equal is to say that they are the same. To say that two plus two equals four is to say that the sum of two and two is the same as four, and to say that two people are equally tall is to say that they have the same height. A completely equal society, therefore, would be a society in which everyone was completely the same. Far from being desirable, such a society can only aptly be described as monstrous – a world devoid of any diversity or individual distinctiveness, in which everyone looked the same, talked the same, thought the same, and acted the same. Even if it were possible to create and maintain such a world, it would hardly be desirable to do so. And if equality is not desirable as a goal, then it is not clear why incremental steps toward that goal should be regarded as on that account being desirable.

No God But God

Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? The answer to the question is controversial. Most Muslims answer yes, following a passage in the Koran that appears to say that both groups do worship the same God. Many Christians, on the other hand, vigorously dispute this claim. Yet it is not clear what exactly this denial is based on. After all, Christians do not dispute that Muslims worship God, after all, and since there is, in fact, only one God, it would seem to follow that Christians (who worship God) and Muslims (who worship God) must be worshiping the same entity, no matter how different their conceptions of Him may be.

I used to think that the above argument was sufficient to show that Muslims and Christians did worship the same God. Since then, however, I have come to think the matter a bit more complicated. As I now see it, whether the claim “Muslims and Christians worship the same God” is true will depend on two things: 1) whether the statement is being made de dicto or de re, and 2) whether the word “God” is taken to be a name or a description.

LDL&S: Health Care

“The death of one man is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” – Joseph Stalin.

It would be an exaggeration, though not a severe one, to say that in the modern west we are ruled by statistics. When government acts on a local level, it is relatively easy for it to see whether its actions are having their desired effect. And when business acts in a free market, there are feedback mechanisms which quickly let the business know how well it is meeting its customer’s needs. A large central government, by contrast, must rely on statistics to judge whether its initiatives have been successful. The problem is that is it often easier to manipulate statistics to show that a given problem is being solved than it is to actually solve the problem.

An example of this can be seen in the case of government run health care. One of the chronic complaints about the National Health Service in Britain, for example, is that people have to wait an unconscionably long time before receiving care. To deal with this problem, the Labour government mandated that patients receive treatment within four hours of arriving at a hospital. The result:

Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets.

Paul Krugman: Enemy of the Poor?

Ask your typical conservative what he thinks of Paul Krugman, and he’s likely to reply: “what a nut!” Krugman is best known among the general public for his op-eds in the New York Times, many of which contain a strident tone quite at odds with his mild mannered personal demeanor. But if you were to ask a conservative or libertarian economist about Krugman, the response is more likely to be: “what a waste!” Prior to starting his NYT’s column (or, at least, prior to the coming of the Bush administration) Krugman was widely regarded as one of his generation’s brightest and most creative economists (if admittedly a left-leaning one), and the view among at least some in the economics profession is that he has let partisanship and his hatred for Bush and the GOP cloud his judgment and/or compromise his intellectual integrity.

When Government Passes the Collection Plate

In his last State of the Union address, President Bush had a nice laugh line in response to recent pleas by some of our citizens to have their taxes raised. Noting that some “have said they would personally be happy to pay higher taxes,” Bush responded, “I welcome their enthusiasm. I’m pleased to report that the IRS accepts both checks and money orders.”

It seems that the Commonwealth of Virginia (and the state of Arkansas) have already beat him to the idea. From the Washington Times:

State lawmakers can rule out Virginian’s offering up more of their hard-earned money to fix the $1.4 billion budget shortfall Gov. Tim Kaine announced this week.

At least that is what a peek at the so-called “Tax Me More Fund” suggests.
Since its inception in 2002, the fund has collected a total of $10,217.04.

It was established a year after Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee challenged proponents of higher taxes to contribute to a similar program when he was governor of Arkansas.

Both programs provide generous taxpayers with a way to contribute more of their money into the state’s coffers and allow lawmakers to highlight the hypocritical nature of higher-tax advocates.

Praise for George Washington from Leo XIII

Today is George Washington’s Birthday (Observed), popularly known as President’s Day. Washington has a rare distinction among American Presidents in that he makes a cameo appearance in a Papal encyclical (a fact which, no doubt, will be of deep significance to those who claim Washington died a Catholic) The encyclical in question is Longinqua, by Leo XIII. Here is the passage in question:

Precisely at the epoch when the American colonies, having, with Catholic aid, achieved liberty and independence, coalesced into a constitutional Republic the ecclesiastical hierarchy was happily established amongst you; and at the very time when the popular suffrage placed the great Washington at the helm of the Republic, the first bishop was set by apostolic authority over the American Church. The well-known friendship and familiar intercourse which subsisted between these two men seems to be an evidence that the United States ought to be conjoined in concord and amity with the Catholic Church. And not without cause; for without morality the State cannot endure-a truth which that illustrious citizen of yours, whom We have just mentioned, with a keenness of insight worthy of his genius and statesmanship perceived and proclaimed. But the best and strongest support of morality is religion. She, by her very nature, guards and defends all the principles on which duties are founded, and setting before us the motives most powerful to influence us, commands us to live virtuously and forbids us to transgress.

Washington’s statement on religion and morality referenced by Leo is from his farewell address:

Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

The full text of the Farewell Address can be found here.